Four new ages for Uru

[Deledrius]

I guess I never registered a prefix specifically for that Age and shared one of my other prefixes across several Ages.. Which is a bad idea, right?

It should only matter that it's unique when you release it. Thankfully it's simple to do with Korman. I have a local list I keep during testing, and I only need to be concerned with prefix collisions when I prepare them for release. It's important that they're unique for people playing on DI/Uru:CC. Any other servers hosting the Ages will likely have their own prefix list.

[Semjay]

These Ages are amazing! So much to see and explore! It's going to keep me busy for a while. I like the way you have incorporated aspects of the game you love into your own creation. I also like the way it's like a treasure hunt too. I really love your textures/materials, especially the crystals. Your plants and foliage have just the right amount of realism to give a lush effect.

Age creation is a long and steep learning path and your Ages have given me lots to think and wonder about for my own next attempt. Thank you.

[melvin]

You are already doing a fine job climbing that learning curve Semjay. Zahlto & Terahgrahm were
both superb ages with a wonderfully created atmosphere; very difficult thing to do in a game. If
you, or anyone else, want to use any of my meshes or textures in your next age, or ages, you are
more than welcome to use them.

[Semjay]

Thank you, Melvin!
I'm getting on with my next Age just now. I'll take you up on that offer. What did you have in mind?

[melvin]

Well you can use the age importer to extract the textures from the ages, you can also get the meshes this way. But I could put a file on Mediafire with all of the DXF meshes used in the ages. Having a library of useful object can be great when creating new ones as you can use part of an existing object which saves allot of work. Finding this source of mesh material seems to be a big problem for many age builders.

[melvin]

Andy did this some years ago on the guild of maintainers forum with meshes from his ages. Don't know if it really helps any one or if these DXF files can be loaded into 3d Max. They should import into blender, but please look at the included read me file about removing the doubles. There are over 450 meshes in a 6.3mb Zip folder to play with, this is the download link.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ytnzpkhny ... s.zip/file

[Semjay]

I just downloaded it.

Oh, wow! There are so many useful and interesting models here! Many thanks Melvin.

[diafero]

So sorry for the long silence! The email about this age reached me when I was just leaving for vacation, and after I came back I had solid 8-10 weeks of no time at all for anything.

I just finished uploading the age to the DI dataserver. This took some effort as the age uses custom Python scripts that do linking, which I have to patch to use the Offline KI linking abilities instead. Linking in Uru is extremely subtle, and any mistake is permanently engraved in the Shard's database (and this has happened in the past), so fan ages are only permitted to link through the known-good linking code in the Offline KI itself. If you are curious, this is the commit that expands my linkfix script to handle the custom Python from these new ages.

Please check if the ages (with the patched linking code) work fine on DI, before I put them into UAM.

[melvin]

Sorry for the extra work you had to do to get the ages online, didn't think they would work at all with all the effort I did to optimise them, especially Palamary Bay which has ten Vis Regions. The links & warps I tested seem to work fine but it's hard to get to the Ruins of Azmar without spoiling some of the game for other players; I may have already done that a bit already. I think it would be best to let people play it for a while & see what problems crop up. The only thing I did notice was the start up Guild of Writers presents logo does not seem to work correctly, even though it works fine offline. Also I noticed the Peridia link to the secret Ahnonay sphere panic links back to relto.

I don't know if you have heard the ground breaking news yet but Cyan are planning to release fan made ages onto Moul Again, they may well be able to fix some linking problems that we can't.

[Deledrius]

The only thing I did notice was the start up Guild of Writers presents logo does not seem to work correctly, even though it works fine offline.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure what you mean.

I don't know if you have heard the ground breaking news yet but Cyan are planning to release fan made ages onto Moul Again, they may well be able to fix some linking problems that we can't.

Yes, we've finally been able to make progress in getting Cyan on board with this whole thing. It's very exciting! We're already working on getting that pipeline to function with as few bumps as possible, in cooperation with Chogon and OpenUru's rarified. The holidays have people busy, but things are looking optimistic.

The linking rules are what they are, however, and it's a good idea for Age builders to be mindful of them. Diafero has those guidelines for a reason.